


The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly

by karrenia_rune



Category: The Dresden Files (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case involving rival stage magicians take a turn for the worse and the peculiar and Connie Murphy has to call the expertise of Harry Dresden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Irena K.

 

 

Disclaimer: The Dresden Files based off of the original novels of Jim Butcher belongs to the SC Fi channel and its various producers and creators as do all of the characters who appear here or are mentioned; they are not mine.

"The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly" by Karen

There are ghosts, the ordinary kind whose origins stem from nothing more ordinary than a night spent consuming copious amounts of liquor and then spending the morning regretting one indulges. 

You could say that the above does not really qualify as bodiless spirits because the fumes of those spirits taste awfully good on one's palate going down, but I'm splitting hairs. Then there are the other sorts of ghosts, bodiless, restless spirits that spend much of their limbo existence between envying and hating the living.

Truth to tell I've seen plenty of both types in my career, hell, I happen to have one as a roommate. 

So when the papers began to run full-length almost front page news coverage of a possible series of murders, all within a certain area of the south side of Chi-town well, it was more than enough for me to sit up and take notice. 

Having Murphy around to explain the presence of a civilian at a crime scene also helped immensely. 

"Walter Ayers, age fifty-one, a dabbler in the performing arts by night as stage magician by day. Cause of death strangulation with a silk scarf."

As I listened to Murphy read off the coroner's report. The small apartment was a one bedroom and bath located on the third floor of an otherwise undistinguished tenement. The owner had kept mostly to himself and worked in an office on the Loop as an accountant. Rather unassuming and quiet, his neighbors had never really gotten to know him that well because Ayers kept to himself.

The previous crime scene we had visited together, had also been as clipped as a stick to just the facts as this latest in the string of inexplicable murders. 

Perhaps the oddest and disturbing thing about these deaths was the lack of motive. The victims had all been chosen at random. 

The only thing in common the latest victims had was that they practiced sleight of hand, you're probably familiar with the type, black suits and capes, smoke and mirrors, and pulling rabbits out of hats. Granted, I had grown up with the stuff, before I realized that I had been born with the knack for the real kind; still that was certainly no reason to kill anyone over the fake kind, was it?

Apparently someone thought so also because now the homicide department of south Chicago was up to number five, counting Ayers. 

`I agreed with both Murphy and Detective Sid Kirmani, even if personally I simply could stand the man; it was high time we nipped this in bud, or put more simply we had to stop this killer before he struck again.'

"You said Ayer's cleaning lady was the last person to see him alive?" Murphy quietly asked.

"She comes every other Tuesday to clean and straighten up, but she was never allowed to touch his magic paraphernalia," replied Kirmani.

"Dresden what at you doing?" Murphy exclaimed finally taking note of my distracted gaze. I had been looking around the apartment careful not to touch anything that might be either compromised by handling it, but I needed some item that had belonged to the deceased if was going to use it to track for auras; all without Murphy and other police officers noticing.

"What? I said a bit startled as Murphy's question got me wool-gathering and then I replied. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about possible connections."

"Did you find any?" she asked.

"No, but I might have something, or I might just be grabbing at straws. I replied.

"Tyler Manning was a sleight of hand artist specializing in reproducing the optical and visual illusion of the legendary Harry Houdini;

`What's your point?" Murphy sighed. 

She was exhausted but knowing her as well as I did knew that she would try to push past it until she finished her present task.

"So, think about it. Each of these deaths was somehow related to the type of magic that they practiced." As I said it the more and more it added up to the plus column. Some were avid practitioners, others merely amateurs, and this last one had been merely a dabbler. It still did make a certain kind of sense. 

As that thought went through my mind like a flash of liquid mercury in a pan; I realized that either someone out there might be using this as a means to edge out the competition, or, and this was an equally frightening thought; maybe there were trying to get rid of all magic users, good, bad, mediocre, or indifferent.

I made a mental note to check in with Bob and see if he had sensed any kind of quivering along the paranormal frequency.

There were times when his inability to stray much further from his skull than walking distance from its place on the table to Harry's front door seriously ground his gears. Now, would be a prime example. Bob growled under his breath and phased through the wall, able to move the paper-bound package only a few centimeters at a time. It would have been far easier to simply pick it up and toss it out the door, but lacking physical hands by which to do so in his spectral existence that option was obviously out. 

Granted when the stranger delivered the package of dynamite, a firebomb, along with tools to light the fuse really should have been more than enough to alert that something was definitely wrong; good thing he had managed to frightened the courier away before he had managed to accomplish any further mischief; but now he was left to dispose of it.

Harry had been tangled up with any variety of cases, some more dangerous than others, some of a deeper dye in the world of the paranormal, some less so, but this was different. Bob, if pressed, might not have been able to say exactly why he felt that so strongly; he simply did. For one thing, it was the blatant ordinariness of it. 

Prior to his departure earlier that same evening Harry had mentioned something that had been targeting magic users, but as per usual Bob had been only partially listening, and had given the matter no further thought until the bomb arrived. 

In the time Harry Dresden had spent working on cases with the Chicago PD, and perhaps even before that he no doubt had managed to rub any number of individuals the wrong way, make more than a few enemies; however, Bob had never believed any of those individuals or disgruntled parties might seek a measure of revenge in such, well, pedestrian manner as a mere firebomb. It smacked of desperation, it smacked of, well, if truth be told, almost an insult to true practitioners of magic. ** 

Bob had just finished disposing of the final pieces of the bomb and the package of dynamite when Harry walked in the front door of the house accompanied by Detectives Connie Murphy and Sid Kirmani;, the trio were engaged in talking animatedly. 

Murphy he had encountered before and while he was well aware that she did not believe in ghosts, magic, at least, despite her practical, no-nonsense nature she was willing to keep any open mind about such things. 

He, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. Bob considered going invisible, but he was intensely curious about what had been happening outside of these four walls.

** "Hi, Bob," Harry greeted when he saw Bob standing half in and half out of the doorway that connected the kitchen with the living room.

"Who's Bob?" the older man asked.

"He's my, well," Harry scratched the stubble on his chin with an abstracted air. "My room-mate of sorts, the rest is, well, complicated."

"Do tell," insisted Kirmani trying to stare Harry down.

"Not right at the present moment, gentlemen," Murphy interceded. "We have more important matters at to deal with, and its best we get to them." Turning to Harry she asked. "If you think Bob might have some information we can use to crack this case, you'd better go and ask him."

Harry nodded and strode across the room to where Bob stood at the doorway. "Sorry, old friend, but I am feeling a bit pressed for time, so I'll skip the pleasantries and get right to the point. Is there anything moving on the paranormal frequency?"

"I do not believe these series of death are caused by anything paranormal."

"What makes you say that?"

"For one thing," Bob trailed off and cocked his head to one side as if thinking the question over in his mind. "If the situation were not so urgent I might be offended at your reference to my spectral existence as a means a radio receiver. In any case," he added in a milder tone, "Not a quiver, not a blip on the radar. You did, however, receive a firebomb and a package of dynamite."

Harry shrugged. "Who knows, maybe it's my creditors."

Bob looked askance at Harry. "Not funny." What have you managed to find out about the victims thus far?"

"Not much. We got all the usual evidence from the crime scenes, the strangest thing about it is that the only connection they have to one other is the fact that all practiced magic, to one degree or another."

Bob sighed. "Indeed."

"I know you don't approve of the smoke and mirrors, capes, pulling rabbits out of one's hat kind of magic, but that doesn't change the fact that they're dead." Harry sighed. "All this is making my head hurt."

Murphy came up quietly behind them while they talked and stood silently by clearing her voice when she sensed a lull in the conversation. "Anything yet?"

"Nothing new," replied Harry with another deep sigh as he reached up to rub his temples with the backs of his hands. Something about this simply was not adding up right, and it was more than just than the deaths of all those others, or the possibility that he might be next on the list of the killer or killers. 

The wards around his property should have been more than strong enough to keep out any potential threats of the paranormal kind, and the security system that Murphy had insisted he install a few weeks ago should have kept out the regular kind; still it never hurt to make certain Harry looked around and rocked back on his heels before he replied.

"Other than someone left me a firebomb which Bob disposed of. Harry closed his eyes and scanned his immediate surroundings with more than his eyes, trying to see if whoever had left any signs of their recent presence, scanning for the slightest quiver, the merest disturbance in what he knew should be there; and after minutes that seemed to stretch into hours for those watching him his efforts were at last rewarded. 

He came out of his trance-like state with an almost audible snap, opening his eyes and nearly falling backward into Murphy's arms so that he would not fall to the living room floor. The mental image imprinted on his mind's eye and retina was a symbol, a symbol of a deep blue hammer and sickle on a white background. "The Quarrymen" he muttered aloud.

"The what?" Murphy asked as she let slip her hold on Harry as he staggered to a more or less upright position and walked over to the sofa and sat down. "The Quarrymen."

"Doesn't ring a bell to me either, but I'm certain I have the name right."

Murphy walked over to the side table that rested to one side of the sofa and picked up the decanter of brandy that Harry kept there in a bucket of ice and picked it up to pour a glass for him. She handed it to him with a curt, "Here. You look like you could use this. You look like you've seen a ghost if you'll pardon the cliché." Over her shoulder, she glanced at the doorway where Bob still lingered. "No offense to present company."

Kirmani came over and poured his own glass of brandy, holding it between his two fingers of his right hand he perched on the armrest of the sofa and asked. "So we have a name now, that's more than we had a week ago. We head back to the station, punch it into the crime database and see what we come up with. Let's head out, it's been a long night."

"Agreed," Murphy nodded.

*** When Murphy showed up at the precinct the following morning she found, amidst all of the other paperwork, reports, memos and case files that had accumulated on her desk there was also a plain unmarked manila envelope, and when she had taken off her coat and settled down in her chair, she found it, the blue hammer and sickle on an 8 ½ x11 piece of quite ordinary paper. Underneath this was the words: Stay out of Quarrymen business if you know what's good for you."

Murphy let the note drop to the floor and sighed. She had been a cop long enough to know a proverbial fox from a hole in the ground; and had certainly been the recipient of any number of threats from any number of wackos in her time; but still, she was angry, tired, and frustrated. She would not leave this case alone, and she would put a stop to the Quarrymen and their little killing spree or her name was not Connie Murphy. ***

 


End file.
